


Promises Of A Peony

by kivy



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Dialogue Heavy, Established Relationship, M/M, Minecraft In Real Life, Unhappy Ending, fluff if you squint, no beta we die like the sacrifices of blood for the blood god, no idea what that tag entails but yes minecraft irl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29038800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kivy/pseuds/kivy
Summary: One summer night I fell asleep, hoping the world would be different when I woke.The five times Dream asks George to marry him... and the one time Dream finally gets his answer.(Inspired by "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.)
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 108
Kudos: 214





	Promises Of A Peony

**Author's Note:**

> further experimentation on a dialogue-driven writing style :) let me know your feedback - i'd love to hear it!

> _I have this idea that the reason we have dreams is we're thinking about things that we don't know we're thinking about - and those things, well, they sneak out of us in our dreams. Maybe we're like tires with too much air in them. The air has to leak out. That's what dreams are._

* * *

“George.”

Dream has stopped gathering wood to approach with his hands behind his back, and George is curious as to where this is going. “Dream?”

Dream’s response is a careful - almost methodical - movement, pulling his hands around himself and displaying a beautiful blue flower between his palms.

A peony, as George recognises it. How it manages to be blue, he doesn’t know.

“Marry me,” Dream says, offering George the flower and more.

He proposes at the beginning of a new world, with an empty inventory and untouched land.

George blinks. His answer is simple.

“Someday.”

Dream is unsatisfied with the answer. “Someday?” He knows it’s not rejection.

The flower in his palms is carried from calloused skin to porcelain, and George fiddles with the petals. “Someday.”

“Why not today?”

“We both know neither of us are ready today.”

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

“ _I am._ ”

“We’ve only just spawned in this new world,” George counters.

“I fall for you in every world anyway.”

“How would you know that? We don’t retain our memories.”

“I retain my feelings. I always will, when they’re for you.”

George can’t help but smile. “And I you.”

“Exactly. So marry me.”

“Someday, my love.”

Dream pauses, watching George twirl the flower in his slender fingers. “You mean that?”

“I do.”

“Then why not now?”

“We’re not ready.”

“And why do you think that?”

“We haven’t even built a house yet, for one.”

“I’ll work on that.”

“You will, will you?”

“I will.”

“Live up to your word,” George smiles, “then ask me again.”

* * *

> _“When do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?”_
> 
> _I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. “I don't know,” I said. “Tomorrow.”_

* * *

“George.”

Dream is walking up to him covered in dirt and exhaustion, and George feels like he might know where this is going. “Dream?”

He pulls George away from the lakeside.

George lets him.

A few paces more through the lush green forest, and they arrive at the house Dream has built for them.

“You did it.”

“I told you I would.”

“It only took you a few days.”

“Better than a month.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“George.” Dream holds his partner’s hands with scarred nails and peeling skin from hard work. George thinks Dream’s hands look quite beautiful like this. “Marry me.”

He proposes at the entrance of their abode, with mother nature and her forest as their witnesses.

George shrugs. His answer is simple.

“One day.”

Dream’s shoulders sag. “That one day isn’t today, is it.” A statement, more than a query.

“It is not.”

“Why? I kept my word. I built us a house. What else do I need to do?”

George walks up to the door, and taps on the _Home_ sign Dream has balanced onto the windowsill. 

It topples over, and lands at George’s feet.

“Make sure it stands, maybe.”

Dream thinks he might just cry. “It’s still a house,” he argues.

George laughs, and Dream’s heart feels lighter. “It is; I’ll give you that.”

“So you’ll marry me now, then?”

“No. One day, remember?”

“How many more days until this _‘one day’_?”

“However many it takes.”

“Takes to what?” Dream is holding George’s hands, again. Between them.

“However many days it takes for you to realize that we don’t need to rush.” Dream’s heart flutters when George brings their hands up and kisses his knuckles. “We’ve got the world ahead of us, my love. We’ve got time.”

“Surely we can spend that time married to each other.”

“One day.”

Dream wants to remove those two words for George’s vocabulary.

“It will happen,” George reassures. “Eventually.”

“You’re going to string me along until the ends of the earth.”

“You would enjoy it.”

“I would. I really would.”

A sigh.

“You’re a devil of a man, George.”

George thinks of the peony sitting in his inventory. “Do you still want to marry me?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Then you can wait for me to accept the deal.”

* * *

> _The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain._

* * *

“George.”

They are tired and aching on their journey to find the village across the desert, and George is starting to know where this is going. “Dream.”

His partner sidles up to him as they trek, shielding George’s petite body from the rays with his green cape.

George thinks this view might be better than any oasis.

“Marry me.”

He proposes in the midst of heat, with a blinding sun and the grips of enervation.

George rolls his eyes, though his lips smile. His answer is simple.

“Not yet.”

“Yet?”

“Not yet, my love.”

“When will we reach the end of that ‘yet’?”

“When the time is right, we will cross the threshold together.”

Dream hums. He almost pouts. “You have a strange penchant for being vague.”

"Vague about what, exactly?”

“Marrying me. It’s almost like you don’t want to,” he teases.

“You know very well that’s far from the truth.”

“And yet it seems a plausible conclusion.”

“Plausible to a brash mind, perhaps.”

“To a mind that has been waiting for years.”

“Has it truly been years?”

“It’s been more than months, at least.”

George takes a swig from their capsule of water. “May you wait a few more, then.”

Dream laughs, shaking his head. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

* * *

> _Scars. A sign that you've been hurt. A sign that you have been healed. Had I been hurt? Had I been healed? Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing._

* * *

“George.”

He is holding a torch in one hand and mining gold with the other when Dream pops his head out from behind stone, and George understands where this is going. “Dream.”

Dream bounds over with ease, cape flowing behind him. At George’s feet, he kneels and offers a fist-sized diamond ore.

“Marry me.”

He proposes in the depths of a cave, with caution thrown to the wind and childlike naivety dominating his veins.

George chuckles. His answer is simple.

"Not right now."

A less-than-disappointed sigh escapes Dream. "Then when?"

"A time."

"A time?"

"In the future."

"It had better be a near future."

George laughs. "We'll get there when we get there."

“When will we get there?”

“In due time, my love. In due time.”

“You’ve made me wait for a long time already, you know.”

“I know.”

“You must know that I have been ready for a majority of it.”

“That was a given.”

“Then why are we not married?”

They both watch as the flames of George’s torch crackle in the dark. “You have always been better than me,” George says.

“That’s not true.”

“In this, it is. You are ready. I may not be.”

A pause. “When will you be ready, then?”

The conversation takes a momentary pause as George digs up a sizable chunk of ore.

He walks up to Dream, takes the diamond, and replaces it with the gold in his hands.

“A time,” he finally answers.

“A time,” Dream repeats. “ _‘In the future,’_ I presume.”

“A near future.”

Dream perks up at the words. “Near.” He holds onto the gold in his palms with sincerity. “Okay.”

* * *

> _Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder._

* * *

"George."

They are both rejecting the lure of the land of dreams in the thick of the night, and George needs not ponder on where this is going. “Dream.”

He simply glances over, a soft smile dancing on his lips.

Dream smiles down at him.

"Marry me."

He proposes in the comfort of familiar walls, with belongings scattered around of both his and George’s. From the window next to their shared bed, the moon gleams its beauty down at them.

George hums, eyes puffing up from his grin. His answer is simple.

"Soon," he says. "Soon."

He expected that. “When is this ‘soon’?”

“Far enough to make you linger. Soon enough to quench your desire.”

“I would rather it be tomorrow.”

George lays a hand over his mouth as he laughs.

Dream removes the hand and beams. “Could it be tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow. But soon.”

“That’s a very ambiguous waiting time.”

“Would the wait be worth it?”

“The wait is for you. Of course it would be worth it. But I don’t enjoy it.”

“Then it will be over soon, my love.”

“You are ready, then?”

“I think I might have always been. Unconsciously.”

“The wait seems useless now,” Dream jokes.

George lifts a hand and runs careful fingers through strands of blonde. “I will be ready soon.”

"Do you promise?"

"I promise."

"Do you really, really, _truly_ promise?"

"I do."

Dream is satisfied with that. "Okay. Soon."

"Soon.” On the windowsill beside them, peony petals perk up and pay attention. “You’ll wait for me a little longer, won’t you?”

“To the ends of the earth.”

“You’re a majority of the way there, I reckon.”

“I promised to venture with you. The world ahead of us,” Dream reminds the both of them.

“We’ll get to the end together.”

“Together.”

Dream leans into George’s touch.

“I like the sound of that.”

* * *

> _But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry._

* * *

"George."

He is standing beside a lone tree atop a mountain beneath the falling blossoms of rain, and Dream knows where this is going.

There is no answer.

He expected that.

He asks anyway.

"Marry me?"

He proposes in the remnants of his life, with cracks in his heart and an azure flower in his calloused fingers, bowing its head to promises untold.

He thinks he can hear it - for just a split second.

George’s answer of, _‘yes’._

The answer he has been yearning for since the beginning of their world.

The answer he has yet to hear.

The answer he wants George to give him.

Instead, he is answered by the sky.

It is carried by the wind; on light wings and through gentle whispers.

_“Not now,” it says._

“Not yet?” Dream asks.

_“Not ever,” it replies._

“Why not?”

  
  


The answer is simple.

  
  


And it shatters Dream’s soul.

  
  


“Why not?”

  
  


The answer is simple.

  
  


And it is home to a name; a date; the words, _My Love._

  
  
  


“Why not, George?”

  
  
  
  


The answer is simple.

  
  
  
  
  


And it sits by Dream’s feet.

  
  
  
  
  
  


_Why not?_

  
  
  
  


The answer is simple.

  
  


  
  
  


And it is George’s grave.

  
  
  
  


[the end.]

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hello :] hopefully i didn't hurt you too much haha
> 
> i dont usually read angst, much less write it, but... well. when life gives you lemons.
> 
> blockquotes (italicized) are quotes from "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Saenz!
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kivy_) (@kivy_) if you want to! I'm always down for a chat ^_^
> 
> until next time! :)


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